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5 Benefits Gamification Can Bring To Your Marketing Business

June 19, 2015

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By: Cormac Reynolds

Mr

O A Steel Fabrications

You might wonder how gamification can possibly benefit your marketing business. But in our buzzing tech industry, gamification is the new phenomenon which is generating sales for company brands. Although the concept of using games and gaming technique isn't new when it comes to connecting users, but it is becoming of great importance to companies. Because the idea is still very new, many companies are either not using the concept or are miserably failing at gamification. Here are 5 ways gamification can benefit your business:

Image: Forrester.com

1. Gather Powerful Customer Data

Companies can easily access customer information by providing a log in form that many gamification platforms require. This will provide crucial details on the customer's name, e-mail address, residence address and contact. This helps the company to collect information on the customer and monitor what they do on their website. To encourage and motivate users, companies can award clicks, badges, points and achievements, which helps in collecting more data. The purpose for most of these games is to collect large amounts of data since this will create valuable customer information and insight. However, if these large chunks of customer information aren't properly analysed then it is worthless to collect such big data. Many vendors provide analytics which can help analyse data to measure customer engagement, activities, behaviour and growth.

2. Solve Complex Business Problems through Crowdsourcing

Encouraging customers to participate on your website and enabling them to interact with you through games, helps in developing a sounding board. You can transform your gamification platform into an avenue for crowdsourcing. Customers can provide feedback about the games and if it is relevant you can apply it to solve your complex business problems. Games such as "ESP game" and "Games with a Purpose" are a few examples of how information can be crowdsourced to resolve complex issues. For instance, Gaming with a Purpose helps train a computer to create accurate answers and the ESP game provides images where two people have to determine and agree on a one-word caption for it. The aim is to agree on as many captions as possible to earn maximum points in 2 minutes. The agreed images will be converted into tags which are recorded so that search engines have a better idea about what the image is about.

3. Use Gamification as an Educational Tool

Gamification is an innovative and creative way to engage customers with a new product before it is launched. Similar to giving free samples of your products in order to create awareness for your product, you can design a game in the form of your product and allow users to play so that they can get an idea of how to actually use your product. Software such as Antivirus and Adobe give out 30-day free trial before asking to subscribe to the product. However, this is a tricky tool as companies might give away too much to customers when it comes to engaging and attracting them. For instance, companies will offer a 10% discount to customers if they subscribe to their website. Customers can avail this opportunity and then easily unsubscribe from their emails. You should also consider offering a reward to the right targeted audience, in order to optimise on gamification efforts.

4. Give Back to the Community through Gamification

Gamification is considered as a two-way relationship according to Gameffective.com, if you are expecting customers to give back to you then they are expecting to receive something in return also. In order to improve your position and attract a healthy group of customers constantly, you will be required to give back to communities. For example, if your business involves keeping the environment green you can encourage your viewers to practice greener activities by rewarding them with gift cards and discounts.

5. Remain Relevant to your Customers

Valuable content displayed on your website about your games is essential in order to remain on top of your customer's mind. Gamification helps improve your online presence as you interact and engage with users on a constant basis. Games are a great way to gather people in a pool together to encourage social engagement, and by providing monetised rewards more and more customers will be attracted. Take notice of what entices your customers in order to remain relevant and valuable to them.

Gamification offers a business very valuable benefits and can be used, as you can see above, in a whole variety of ways to act as a positive influence.